Chapter 21
After seven years in the base, I have enough seniority in San Francisco to hold pretty much the layover city of my choice each month, but I can’t always get the exact days off I want, so I had spent Thanksgiving in Shanghai, where Sheila Feeney and I had Thanksgiving dinner at the Red Chicken, a restaurant the size of a high school gymnasium where you select the exact plate of meat, fish, and vegetables that you want from a huge display case, tell the cook (or, in our case, the helpful translating hostess) how you’d like it prepared, and wait for a smiling waitress to bring it to your table on roller skates. The food is okay, but my favorite part of eating at the Red Chicken is the girls in the tight, tiny Tsing Tao uniform dresses. If you order a Tsing Tao beer, these girls ar
